


And The Horned God Makes Four

by Rivine



Category: Undisclosed Fandom, Zone Blanche | Black Spot (TV)
Genre: Eerily pristine abandoned places, Forest Is Dark and Mysterious and Possibly Sentient But Definitely Out to Get Us, Giant Glass Tubes Bubbling with Suspicious Liquid, Multi, Sex Pollen, Supernatural Elements, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 14:03:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20292670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivine/pseuds/Rivine
Summary: Welcome to Villefranche, where the forest has its own goals.





	And The Horned God Makes Four

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaeni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaeni/gifts).

> Zone Blanche | Black Spot is a tv series set in the small, isolated town of Villefranche. Villefranche is surrounded by an ancient forest and a cellular dead zone, and has a homicide rate six times the national average. Most of the homicides are attributable to the townspeople, but some are… not. Major Laurène Weiss is the head of the local gendarmerie, and Adjudant Martial “Nounours (=Teddy Bear)” Ferrandis is one of the gendarmes under her command. Prosecutor Franck Siriani was assigned to Villefranche as a punishment for screwing up one of his cases.

“Laurène!” Teddy Bear called. He had stopped, standing several meters behind them when Laurène turned to look. 

He pointed at the ground beside him wordlessly. 

“Shit,” she said. “_Shit_.”

“What is it?” Siriani asked, clearly puzzled. 

“If we walk faster—“

“To where?” Teddy Bear asked. “There’s more, look.” He gestured past her, and then trailed his arm in a broad sweep to the side. 

“The ground will be rising soon,” Laurène told him. She dug the map from her pocket. “We would have gone near this ridge anyway. If instead of coming back this way, we go up it, follow it to the East and then come down by this stream, we can make a loop.”

“If we can get through,” Teddy Bear said. He clearly doubted it. “It would be smarter to turn back now. We can use another route tomorrow.”

“No. No, that’s too late. We need to get there today. It could be a crime scene.”

“I still don’t understand what’s happening,” Siriani broke in. 

“It’s the flowers,” Teddy Bear said, after a short pause. 

“Ah,” Siriani said, the edge creeping into his voice. “This must be another of the things I would know if I were from here. Tell me, what exciting part of Villefranche’s local nature is this? And how many people is it responsible for killing, in the past twelve months? Or should I be asking about the past six?”

“It’s not that bad,” Laurène said. “And we can get past them before it becomes a problem.”

“It’s more… the little death,” Teddy Bear said. “You know.”

Siriani looked back and forth between them, before it settled into place. “The flower is an aphrodisiac?”

“A strong one,” Laurène said.

“We call it lover’s daisy,” Teddy Bear told him. “The flowers open at dusk, and then…” He shrugged. 

“Tell me, Major, do you ever get the feeling that Villefranche enjoys fucking with its populace?” Siriani asked, in the bitter, amused tone that he liked to use, the one that grated on Laurène's nerves. 

“We should keep walking,” Laurène said, instead of answering. “We’ll get to the crime scene and return along the ridge.”

“Are you sure there are none of these flowers on the ridge?” Siriani looked more out of place than usual, his suit at odds with the forest around them and with the rain poncho awkwardly draped over it. 

“They don’t grow higher up. Only in these lower areas.” Laurène added, because he had irritated her, “No need to fear, Mr. Prosecutor. We will do our very best to get you away from them before dark.”

With that she turned and started walking again. 

It was at least two hours, through wet foliage and soft ground, before they came to the spot the anonymous phone call had described as a room without walls. 

It was strange, even for this forest. A black-and-white tiled floor stretched across a small clearing, perfectly even and level. A workbench ran along one side, glass-fronted shelving along the opposite side. In the middle, approximately three meters tall and half a meter wide, stood a clear glass cylinder. Full almost to the domed top with clear liquid, it rose from a low aluminum box on the floor, and something in the box sent up a steady stream of fine bubbles. Around it, the tiles lay bare, not a single leaf or twig marring the glossy surface. 

The shelves held bottles of all sizes, some clear and some amber. Chemistry apparatus was arrayed on the workbench. Flasks and graduated cylinders stood in neat rows, clustered in little groupings, as if for several different procedures. The quiet rattle of a magnetic stir plate running off-balance was the only sound. 

Laurène ventured onto the tile floor, while Teddy Bear started taking photos. She and Siriani stood together in front of the tube. There was nothing but the bubbles in it, rising from some hidden source at the base. At closer inspection, Laurène saw that the fluid was not quite clear. There was a hint of cloudiness, a tinge of opacity not accounted for by the stream of silvery bubbles. From the base of the huge tube came a power cord that ran along the floor, out of the room, up a post, terminating in a solar panel.

“Maybe it’s just water,” Teddy Bear suggested optimistically, coming up behind them and raising his camera toward the tube. 

“I don’t think we are that lucky, Adjudant Ferrandis,” Siriani told him. 

Laurène left the tube to study the glassware, but couldn’t make out what the experiment or test had been. She found the stir plate, endlessly stirring a flask of something pale orange. The stir plate was hooked up to a similar cord and solar panel arrangement as the tube. 

Siriani was opening the glass cabinets, having Teddy Bear take a photo and then pulling down bottles to read the labels. Laurène left them to it, slowly walking around the outside perimeter of the space. 

She found the body in the underbrush, only the fingers of one hand escaping into view from the bushes and branches that been dragged over it. The mysterious caller hadn’t mentioned a corpse, only a place the gendarmes needed to visit urgently. The body clearly could not belong to the caller, as the hand was a sickly grey on its upper side and bruised dark with pooled blood on the underside. Whoever it was, they had died some time ago, and lain there since soon after death. 

Laurène called over Teddy Bear and Siriani. They would have to return with Leïla—in her role as coroner, instead of town doctor—to properly examine the body without destroying evidence, and the fire department to help them transport it back to the morgue. 

“We should leave,” Laurène announced, after she judged that Teddy Bear had taken enough photos of the corpse under its pile of brush. He put his camera away quickly, and she knew he had been hoping she would say it for a while now. There were still quite a few hours before the evening drew in, but they had been weighing on his mind. 

They left the room without walls from its eastern side, the one that was lined with shelves, and the backs of the cabinets hid the strange column of liquid from view when Laurène glanced back. That was almost more unsettling than having it visible. 

They trekked to the start of the ridge Laurène planned to follow to the stream. It was a gradual rise at first, but soon they had to struggle up steeper slopes and pick their way around short rocky cliffs. Mist crept in, slipping in filmy tendrils between the dark trunks of the trees. The visibility dropped, and Laurène felt more and more strongly that something else was closing in on them as well. 

Every forked branch in the corner of her eye became the tines of antlers; every wisp of fog curling oddly in front of a tree became the steam of a hot breath. She felt her skin tightening along her back, waiting for the blow to hit her. But behind her there was only Teddy Bear, who was there only because he was following her, and Siriani, who was there because he had been sent in disgrace to Villefranche, and intended to solve as many mysteries as it took to win him the good favor he needed to return home. 

It almost felt inevitable, when the trees began to bleed. It was red staining, oozing from welts in their bark, and it was supposedly caused by something in the soil. Laurène wasn’t sure she believed that anymore. It looked like blood—like the forest was warning them of a wound that had opened, or would open—and maybe in Villefranche it was. 

“We should turn back,” Teddy Bear said. He was close, and spoke quietly, and Siriani probably hadn’t heard him. 

“And what, have a prosecutor sandwich? It’s too late now for us to make it past the daisies before dusk. We have to make the loop, now.”

“Some things are worse than a bad morning after, Laurène. We should go home.”

“We’ll go a little farther,” Laurène offered, not ready to accept defeat yet. “If it doesn’t get better, we’ll turn around.” 

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“We’ll make it home,” she said. “I promise. Okay, Teddy Bear?”

“Fine.”

They kept walking, and it did not get better. The mist thickened into light drizzling rain, which did nothing to improve visibility and only turned the white of the fog to grey. The oppressive atmosphere continued, and Laurène knew she was reaching the end of the time she had before she needed to admit they should retreat. 

“I’ll go to the top of this outcropping,” she suggested. “And if I can’t see a clearer way forward, we’ll decide what to do then.” 

“You think we should turn around?” Siriani asked. He seemed surprised, but perhaps since he was always uncomfortable and nervous in the woods, he had not realized how strongly the forest had changed from its normal tenor to one of menace. “Even with the— the lover’s daisies?”

“I think I should go to the top, and see what it looks like from there,” was as far as Laurène was willing to budge. 

Teddy Bear was giving her an annoyed look, frustrated that she was still considering pressing forward. She ignored it, and started to work her way up the rough ledges of the bulbous outcrop that was perched like a toad on the crest of the ridge. 

There was a wolf at the top of it. It stepped forward, into Laurène’s view, before she had gone more than halfway up. She stopped, frozen. It stared back with pale eyes in a grey and white face, its fur shaggy and sparkling from the mist. 

“What is it?” Teddy Bear called up. 

From the ground, he and Siriani wouldn’t be able to see the wolf at the top, only that Laurène had stopped scaling the outcropping. 

The wolf shifted from foot to foot. It was looked at her pointedly, but Laurène didn’t know what it expected from her. She stayed still. 

“Laurène?”

“Wait, just wait a moment,” she called back. 

The wolf leaned forward, craning its neck down at her. Slowly, its lip began to curl, and a quiet growl rumbled in its chest. 

Laurène backed down a step, her eyes not leaving the wolf’s. Its growl ebbed, only resuming when Laurène paused in her decent. She had to look away to find a place to wedge her toe in a steeper part of the outcropping, and when she looked back up, the wolf had vanished. 

“What was it?” Siriani asked, when Laurène was standing in front of them.

“The wolf—“ she started to tell him, but a grinding noise from above cut her off. She was already running when Teddy Bear grabbed her arm to pull her away from the outcropping. 

They all three made it clear as a boulder bigger than her head tumbled down, striking the route Laurène had taken several times before hitting the ground. 

“We need to turn around,” Teddy Bear said. 

“I am forced to agree with him, Major,” said Siriani. “This is clearly too risky.”

“Fine,” Laurène agreed. “This is going to be uncomfortable,” she murmured to Teddy Bear as she passed him. 

“We can survive ucomfortable,” he answered. 

The trudged back the way they had come, slipping and sliding down the inclines they had panted their way up. When they came to the tiled floor and giant tube, they silently passed it by without stopping. 

“So how dark does it have to get before these flowers open?” Laurène heard Siriani ask Teddy Bear behind her. 

“Not very dark. A bit after sundown,” Teddy Bear told him. It sounded like he was eating his sunflower seeds again. He had stopped when the mist began to envelop them, and Laurène felt a pang of regret. She hadn’t meant to frighten him that badly by insisting on continuing. 

“That’s not very long,” Siriani said. “Will we have time to make through the area where they’re growing?”

“No,” said Teddy Bear. “We’ll be right in the middle of them at this rate.”

“Perhaps we should go faster, then. No offense to either you or Major Weiss, Ferrandis, but this is not a situation that I am looking forward to.”

Laurène privately agreed. 

“It probably won’t make a difference. This whole valley probably has patches of them all over it, and we won’t be able to make it back to the road before the light’s gone.”

They had left the car at the end of the old, seldom-used road that ran furthest into area the anonymous caller had described, when he had urgently whispered into the phone. It was a remote area, one usually left alone by hunters and mushroom foragers. The lover’s daisy might well be the answer to what the caller had been doing in the woods when he found the room. 

“It amazes me that anyone would live like this,” was Siriani’s response to this news. 

“You haven’t been here long enough,” Teddy Bear said. “Give it time, and you’ll see why people don’t leave.”

“I’d rather take your word for it,” he answered, and fell into a gloomy silence. 

Clumps of lover’s daisy dotted the undergrowth, the narrow, heart-shaped leaves a brighter green amid the ferns and moss. The flowers’ petals were still closed into tight, pale pink cones on their stalks. 

The mist had disappeared, fading away into nothingness as they backtracked toward the daisies. The light filtered down in golden shafts, motes swirling on a breeze Laurène couldn’t feel. The flowers almost glowed in the slanting light. 

They were in the densest patch of lover’s daisy Laurène had seen since Teddy Bear first pointed them out, when the last ray of light was swallowed up by the dense forest, and the sun set. Laurène stopped. 

“Shouldn’t we keep going?” Siriani asked. 

“It won’t do any good,” Laurène told him. 

“As a distraction from—“ 

She unzipped her rain jacket and started to pull both her sweater and shirt off over her head. “Lover’s daisy doesn’t allow for distractions.”

“What—“

She heard a shuffling behind her, and when she looked back over her shoulder, she saw that Siriani had half turned away. 

Teddy Bear shrugged apologetically at Siriani. “If we’re wearing clothes when the scent hits us, they’ll only get ruined. It’s better to have them in one piece in the morning.”

“You mean it’s actually going to make us have sex?” Siriani said, incredulous. “I thought you meant… a certain measure of awkwardness, but not…” He forgot his attempt at decency and turned back to Laurène. 

“No,” said Laurène. “Self control disappears. There’s no helping it.” She undid her bra and bent down to unlace her boots.

“You can put your glasses with my camera,” Teddy Bear offered. “So they don’t get broken.”

“This is insane,” Siriani said, appalled. “I’m not having sex with half the gendarmerie, in this god-forsaken forest!”

“Two-thirds,” Laurène corrected him. She was tired and wet and annoyed with his attitude, and didn’t feel like going easy on him. 

“I know that! Are you out of your mind, Major?” he demanded.

“I don’t hear Teddy Bear complaining, Mr. Prosecutor,” she said. 

“He's not your superior,” Siriani objected, “and he's used to this place’s bullshit! Forgive me, Adjudant, but growing up in Villefranche must give you all a warped idea of what is normal, and—and, acceptable.”

Teddy Bear unslung the camera case from his shoulder to set it on the ground. “Being used to it doesn’t mean I like it,” he said. “I wish we’d turned around at the start, but we’re here now, so…” He shrugged again and took off his hat. “Clothes off.”

Siriani didn’t budge. 

“Have it your way, then,” Teddy Bear told him, and started undressing. 

Laurène had her clothes off and wrapped in her rain jacket before the first daisy opened. Teddy Bear had to struggle through the soft waft of scent to get his tucked away safely by his camera bag, but he managed it. Siriani, who had stood, fidgeting and staring into the trees, was still fully clothed. 

The second drift of sweet, musky air was stronger. It came heavy on the slight breeze, wrapping around them and instantly warming Laurène’s goosefleshed skin. Time seemed to slow as all three of them moved towards each other at once, and the only thought in her mind was that she needed sex, and she needed it now. 

Siriani kissed her desperately, his hands in her hair, while she tried to shove his trousers down without undoing the fly. Teddy Bear had gotten his hands under Siriani’s poncho, and was pulling at his shirt. The buttons popped, and pattered against Laurène’s hands on their way to the ground. She yanked harder at Siriani’s waistband, and a seam gave. He was pressed up against her, with Teddy Bear leaning against his back, and with their bodies so close it was difficult for her to shove his trousers down even though she finally had them loose enough. But she managed, and hiked her leg up to his hip, trying to get him inside her already. Siriani’s hands left her hair to grab at her lower back, trying to help her onto his cock. It wasn’t working, and Teddy Bear was tugging at Siriani’s shoulders, trying to get them to lay down. In frustration, Laurène joined him, and they all tumbled to the ground.

Lower down, with the daisies’ leaves all around them, the smell of the flowers was even stronger. Laurène moaned, shifting and pulling at Siriani until she could get his cock inside her at last. Instead of tempering her frustration, the feeling of him thrusting into her only heightened her need. She arched into it, pushing the pace harder and faster. 

Laurène was vaguely aware of Teddy Bear pressing his face against Siriani’s nape, kissing his neck and the tops of his shoulders. He was rocking into Siriani, and Siriani seemed caught between kissing Laurène and throwing his head back and giving Teddy Bear better access to his neck. 

Her first orgasm barely took the edge off. They were laying atop the flowers, and every move crushed them more, sending new drifts of scent into the air. It was overpowering, consuming all thought other than her desire to fuck forever. 

Sweat slicked her body. The chill of the evening air was the only thing keeping her from gasping from overheating as well as from exertion. The dusk was growing deeper, the last residual light draining away. The sky was barely brighter than the black lines of branches crisscrossing overhead. Laurène moaned up at them as Siriani’s fingers dug into her breasts, and—distantly, through the haze of the lover’s daisy—she thought she saw some of them move behind Teddy Bear’s head. 

The branches moved again, coming closer, revealing a dark shape below them where they converged. They sank lower, and Teddy Bear groaned. Laurène saw what might have been a glint of light, like the shine off an eye in the shadow at Teddy Bear’s back, but then her vision blurred as she came again, and she was lost in the burning euphoria and need of the flowers.

When she was next aware of what was happening, it was to find herself waking up in the grey morning light. She was tired and sore, but every muscle felt loose and relaxed. Someone’s arm was draped across her side, and she turned her head to find out whose. Siriani was lying curled at her back, and behind him was Teddy Bear, his arm stretched across them both. 

She nudged his hand, and he shifted but didn’t wake. She nudged harder, and slowly, he stirred. 

“You okay?” she asked quietly, so as not to wake up Siriani. 

He gave a slight nod, looking exhausted.

“What happened? I saw—"

“Not today, Laurène. Leave it for later.”

“Okay.” She squeezed his hand. “Later, then.”

Teddy Bear squeezed back, after the barest of pauses. “Ah, shit,” he sighed, “the body. We’re going to have to work today, aren’t we?”

“I’ll drive. You can sleep in the car on the way back,” she promised. She could give him that much of a break, knowing that at some point she would ask him to tell her about the antlered figure.


End file.
